Energy Ventures Deal Day:
Deep-Tech Startups Secure Potential Pilot Deals
Dhahran Techno Valley (DTV) successfully conducted the Energy Ventures Deal Day, a commercialization platform connecting deep-tech startups with energy industry leaders and investors. With 130+ attendees, the initiative marked the graduation of the first cohort of KFUPM startups successfully completing DTV’s Deep-Tech Ventures Program (DVP), which was designed to accelerate field pilot deployments as the key validation step for creating investable startups. The event was attended by Dr. Muhammad Al-Saggaf, President of KFUPM, highlighting the University’s commitment to advancing deep-tech innovation and commercialization.
During the event, nine DVP startups pitched their solutions to a panel of industry leaders, including Saudi Aramco, SLB, TAQA, NESR, Air Products, Halliburton, and Weatherford. The event also featured an exhibition showcasing 20 incubated startups from DTV.
Graduating Startups
Wellguard Solutions: A selective chemical technology that reduces water cut by more than 80% while protecting the oil zone in wells.
Sustain: Electromagnetic acoustic sensors for internal pipeline coating defect detection.
Chemsust: The only biodegradable material for corrosion inhibition and enhanced oil recovery in oilfields.
Subsurface Intelligence: Predictive modeling for reservoir history matching in hours instead of weeks.
Net Zero Systems: Custom AI and drone solution to reduce methane leak detection and repair costs by 50%.
NeoSorb: Novel green solid sorbent for efficient, low-cost carbon capture.
Oil Spill Cleanup: A unique chemical solution for managing oil spills on water to prevent spreading and facilitate collection.
4NM: A 5x faster, energy-efficient manufacturing method for non-metallic high-performance parts using electromagnetic induction.
BioEnergy Arabia: Turning waste cooking oil into low-cost, high-quality biodiesel.
Commercial Impact
The Deal Day fast-tracked industry and investor engagement, resulting in three committed pilot deployment deals between Wellguard and TAQA, NeoSorb and Air Products, and Chemsust and NESR. In these partnerships, the startups will prepare their solutions while the industrial partners provide field access, operational support, and logistics to facilitate deployments.
In addition, 16 expressions of interest for pilots and 18 follow-up discussions from investors and other partners were captured; these will be processed to facilitate deal closures and deeper technical evaluations.
This milestone helped in achieving key DTV objectives in regards of increasing the number of created deep-tech startups within Dhahran ecosystem, the activation of DTV’s partnership framework agreement, and the implementation of the tuned governance framework introduced to the KFUPM ecosystem such as the 0,0,0 IP policy and the authorization of KFUPM affiliates to incorporate ventures.